Member of Technical Staff, Release Engineer

Vapi; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 235,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health coverage

Off-sites

Flexible time off

L&D budget

Meals & transport

Job summary

Vapi in San Francisco is seeking a senior/staff engineer to own CI/CD and release infrastructure at scale. You will automate safe, fast releases involving Argo CD, Terraform, and Atlantis, and work with product and infrastructure teams.

The role emphasizes observability, testing, and reducing deployment bottlenecks, with a hybrid, full-time work arrangement and a compensation package featuring a base salary of $235k–$280k plus meaningful equity.

Qualifications

• Evidence of owning critical CI/CD or release infrastructure at scale with measurable cross-team impact.
• Strong distributed-systems fundamentals and failure diagnosis across build/test/deploy/infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes-based delivery systems and IaC tooling (Argo CD, Terraform, Atlantis).
• Habit of automating repetitive work, testing, and data-driven reliability improvements.
• Curiosity, quick context gathering, and clear ownership of outcomes; AI-coding tools familiarity a plus.
• SRE background and experience with multi-agent workflows, plus TS/Go knowledge is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Map release architecture end to end and identify biggest bottlenecks.
• Own the release-tooling roadmap and improve observability and diagnosis.
• Establish a repeatable model for safe, fast releases with self-service workflows.

Skills

CI/CD ownership

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Observability

Go

Tools

Argo CD

Terraform

Atlantis

Job description

Voice AI that resolves, not transfers.Most phone systems trap callers in menus and scripts. Vapi is the platform for deploying voice agents that know your business and can listen, adapt, and resolve in minutes.

The numbers: 1 billion calls. 1 million developers. 10x enterprise ARR growth

The customers: Amazon Ring, ServiceTitan, New York Life, Intuit, Kavak, and thousands more, from YC startups to the Fortune 500

The news: a $50M Series B led by Peak XV Partners, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Y Combinator, and our earlier backers. Total raised: $72M

Why We’re Hiring This Role:

Vapi ships hundreds of pull requests a day while serving some of the world’s largest enterprises. Every release must stay fast, safe, observable, and predictable at scale.

Our CI and deployment systems are critical product infrastructure. We need a senior/staff engineer to remove bottlenecks, repair fragile deploy paths, and increase confidence without slowing product teams.

You’ll own the systems behind safe releases, including Argo CD, Terraform, and Atlantis—and automate the reliable path. This role focuses on CI/CD, testing, and deployment safety, not primary incident response.

What You’ll Do:

• 30 Days: Map Vapi’s release architecture end to end. Partner with product and infrastructure engineers, baseline CI/test/deploy performance, identify the biggest failure modes, and ship an initial improvement.
• 60 Days: Own the release-tooling roadmap and operating health. Remove the costliest CI/deploy bottlenecks, improve observability and diagnosis, and automate slow or failure-prone workflows.
• 90 Days: Establish a repeatable model for safe, fast releases with measurable gains in validation time, deploy speed, and reliability. Deliver self-service workflows and guardrails, and set the longer-term release-infrastructure roadmap.

Who You Are:

• Evidence of owning critical CI/CD or release infrastructure at meaningful scale and driving measurable cross-team improvements. We care about impact, not a specific number of years.
• Strong distributed-systems fundamentals and the ability to diagnose failures across build, test, deployment, and infrastructure layers.
• Hands-on experience operating Kubernetes-based delivery systems and infrastructure-as-code tooling such as Argo CD, Terraform, and Atlantis or comparable systems.
• A habit of automating repetitive work, investing in testing and passive defenses, and using data to prove that a system became faster or more reliable.
• Deep curiosity and the ability to gather context quickly, form a clear point of view, and keep pace as the architecture and product evolve.
• A low-ego teammate who communicates clearly and owns outcomes. Familiarity with AI coding tools is expected; experience as an SRE, with development frameworks like multi-agent workflows, and programming languages like TypeScript and Go are a plus.
• This is a full-time, hybrid role in San Francisco.

How We Work:

• Build something worthy of loveCraft matters. We aim to build products and experiences customers genuinely love, not just tolerate.
• Commit and follow throughWe finish what we start and build trust by being people others can count on.
• Why not today?We value urgency and momentum. The fastest path to customer value usually wins.
• Seek raw inputWe go directly to customers, data, and teammates instead of relying on summaries or assumptions.
• It’s our problemWe operate as one team. We share credit, own mistakes together, and support each other when things get hard.
• Be direct and kindWe give feedback clearly, respectfully, and without delay.

Why Vapi:

• Generational impact: Build the human interface for every business
• Ownership culture: Many of us are previous founders
• Kind team: The founders, Jordan and Nikhil, are Canadians
• Tier-1 Investors: YC, KP seed, Bessemer Series A

What We Offer:

• Real stake: $235,000–$280,000 base salary, plus meaningful equity ownership
• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision plans
• Team love: We love hanging out, and we do quarterly off-sites
• Flexible time off: take what you need
• More: catered meals, transportation, equipment, and a $10k annual L&D budget